TNM is Friday, March 11 set to unveil the winners of its ICT competition Smart Challenge following conclusion of the voting process on February 28.
Of a total of over 30 entries, 15 have been short-listed into the final pool from which judges will select the finalists whose ultimate prize is a trip to Silicon Valley in the United States of America (U.S). The 15 will undergo an orientation program to fine-tune their applications.
Launched on October 5, 2015 the TNM Smart Challenge provided students, pupils and their communities a platform to showcase innovation in mobile application development and over 30 entries made to the final list of voting phase.
“The voting phase which accorded the public a chance to vote for their favourite application in the competition closed on February 28, 2016 from which 15 entries have made it into the final process. Judges will now scrutinize the entries to come up with the final winners,” said TNM’s.
Magombo said the response has been encouraging as the competition received overwhelming participation in all the three categories of Smart Kid for pupils, Smart Student for scholars in tertiary education and Smart Community for their institutions.
He said the 15 finalists will be taken through an orientation program before the grand event where they will interact with TNM management and experts.
“Through this, they will be mentored on various skills including entrepreneurship, how to optimise and commercialise their apps, app development and prepare for opportunities ahead. This will prepare them for the grand event,” he said.
The Head of innovations thanked the general public for full participation in the competition which started with series of workshops in all regions across the country.
“As a telecommunications company, we wish to create an enabling environment for innovations in ICT. It is our continuous hope that this competition becomes the trendsetter for various ICT innovations for youth of the country,” Magombo emphasized.
Chancellor College Computer Science Lecture Dr. Kondwani Munthali described the competition as exciting.
“It has been a wonderful experience to our students and I thank TNM for introducing the Smart challenge plus all the efforts trying to pull-out talent from young people who have talents,” said Dr Munthali.
ICT Association of Malawi president and founder of Sparcs System Limited Wisely Phiri hailed TNM for coming up with the competition.
“TNM has really thrown the ball into the court for the young people to innovate and this is very commendable. And the young people have also demonstrated that given support they have a great potential to come up with applications that are essential for Malawi,”
Through this competition, winners will travel to USA, Silicon Valley where they will tour Facebook, Google, Apple and Stanford University. Others will win Smart devices and computers for a lab.
TNM engaged MHub, Facebook, Google, Opera Software and IBM as technology partners for this initiative.
